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After the long break and then so many updates a month ago, I’m thrilled to get a bunch of details added back in. Essentially, I was able to recreate much of what I lost when Google Earth crashed and lost a days work. My goal was very tight alignment of the tracks and stations on the CGW branches to Chicago, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. Things should be much more exact now… though I still haven’t found a good source of details for exactly where the stations sat.

My next efforts will be to finish the stations out to Omaha, get the area around Red Wing sorted out, and get the alignment and stations correct to Mankato. After that, the basic Chicago Great Western lines will be complete.

Yes, I’m hoping someone other than me reads things here even after this long of a break. Why the break? New job. Kids in high school. Life in general. Sorry. I’ll be trying much harder to make many smaller changes over time to keep things interesting.

So, I took a staycation to watch the kids while my wife was traveling and it lead to lots of time to myself as the weather changed.. perfect for pouring over old documents! The result was the largest single update in the site’s history… and it would have been even larger if I had known that Google Earth lacks an auto-save feature. I worked all day on exacting locations for Chicago Great Western’s stations and route only to lose them all when Google Earth crashed. For the record, it only writes changes when you quit, so quit often!

It was a great few days looking at some really great stories.. like the rumble between two Iowa towns: McIntire and Bailey. One survives today and the other is long gone. And then there’s the history of a valley just east of Altura MN. Looking at that geography, I can absolutely see why CGW abandoned it rather than carve out yet another right of way on the side of some steep hills. I loved it all and just wished all my research was already on the site.

What did make it? I posted Version 06 of the “All” map which includes:

I also separated out the Interurban lines that were in the “all” map and made individual pages for them. Really.. I had no idea I hadn’t already done that. All of this started with the interurbans so I’m not sure what happened. This includes:

For those who have been on the site before, you might have noticed some “slight” changes. You know, I deleted my old stuff and started again. Don’t Worry, it’s still about mapping trains and their old routes.

Please give me some time to bring in all the old data and to turn on the maps. I’m working on it!